Talk:National Dance Company Wales

Change of name

The name of this company has recently changed - how do you change the wikipedia title?Misstinkafairy (talk) 13:41, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Moved question to a section below top templates. (Further new sections go at the end of the page.) The article has now been renamed. --Mirokado (talk) 23:02, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Copyright violations

I have just for a second time reverted wholesale copying from the NDCW website. This time the text was clearly copied and pasted as a typo "taht" was also duplicated. The very small number of tweaks to the text do not affect the copyright violation. Please update the article by writing original text supported by reliable sources, not by copying text from elsewhere. --Mirokado (talk) 22:53, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I've spoken with the company and have confirmed the text here was added by members of staff at the company that originally wrote the content for the website. Given the understandable overlap in text (serving very similar purposes) on the NDCWales site and the wikipedia page, how do you suggest moving forward and improving the article without violating copyright? Surely it makes no sense to have them rewrite everything in paraphrase to say the same thing so would adding a creative commons licence to the main NDCWales site allow for the edits? Owencm (talk) 13:39, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. Firstly I want to make it clear that none of what I say is intended to imply any improper or unprofessional intentions, but there are several problems with such edits:

• Wikipedia:Conflict of interest: this basically advises against edits like these but does not forbid them and suggests how to avoid problems (my summary would be: "don't do that: here be Dragons!")
  • Clearly anybody being paid to edit Wikipedia is in a very difficult position if a content dispute arises
• The purposes you mention are not generally similar at all: the text is promotional text written for the dance company's web site, whereas Wikipedia uses neutral language which takes account of representative reliable sources. In this case the bios are written in a fairly neutral tone so that is not a major problem, but:
• Even if you decide that the original authors can contribute material, verbatim copies of whole paragraphs from the dance company's website will not in my view be acceptable:
  • Although brief quotes can be quite effective, there is no point in having most of the article just duplicate text which is already present in the external link to the official website
  • Wikipedia is not a mirror
  • There is probably too much detail in the website bios for a Wikipedia article about the dance company, so shorter paragraphs for each person would be better for overall balance in the article
• Even if there is agreement that this can be done:
  • I imagine that the Wikimedia Foundation would require a communication from NDCW releasing the copied content under a suitable licence before the text could be copied (edit) we need an expert to say whether adding the license statement to the website would be enough
  • Once other editors have changed the original as they find appropriate (which of course they will) it will no longer be possible to replace it by a verbatim copy of updated text on the website since that would involve deleting the other original contributions, so any "time saving" is a once-off effect and will not help with keeping the article up to date
  • The origin must be suitably acknowledged and just an inline reference is probably not enough for material which starts off as a direct quote
  • Although we often rely on an official website for basic information, we should also use, and reference, other sources where possible. This in any case implies a fair bit of extra work compared to just copying text, so there is not much time to be saved once the job is done properly. (Having said that, there are lots of articles which need improvement in that regard, of course, but new material should be, in my view, free of such legacy problems)
  • In particular, I think we would need independent inline references to support the details about living people we include

If you want advice from more experienced editors than myself about conflicts of interest, you may wish to post at the Conflict of Interest Noticeboard. I have also left a note at User_talk:Moonriddengirl#National_Dance_Company_of_Wales, asking Moonriddengirl to have a look here and perhaps comment. She is one of the users most involved with copyright issues. --Mirokado (talk) 01:00, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Comment Hi. :) Thanks for your careful consideration of these issues! Focusing first solely on copyright, it would be sufficient for the organization to release their content at their website, with a statement such as:

The text of this website [or page, if you are specifically releasing one section] is available for modification and reuse under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License (unversioned, with no invariant sections, front-cover texts, or back-cover texts).

If they don't want to put the display on the website, they can instead write to the Wikimedia Foundation to acknowledge the release; we recommend they use the form at Wikipedia:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. It covers all bases. Worthy of note, both of these licenses permit commercial reuse and modification.

If permission is given via e-mail, the respondent to that letter should follow up with necessary formalities; if it is displayed at the website and the content restored here, the template {{dual}} should be added to the bottom of the article (generally in the references section) to acknowledge copying. It's a good idea for the National Dance Company of Wales to continue to display the licensing release in that case, as future editors may look to verify and, if they cannot, remove the content.

All that said, Mirokado's points are well made particularly about the stability of the content. It's completely natural that a group or organization will promote themselves on their own website; that's primarily what it's for. But that's counter to the intentions of Wikipedia. This article already needs cleaning up to bring it in line with our neutrality policy. For example, "She has brought to Wales some of the best dancers currently working in Europe, offering them the chance to work with world class choreographers to produce productions that are dynamic, exciting and challenging." Who says they are the best? Who says the choreographers are "world class" or that the productions are "dynamic, exciting and challenging"? Statements of this sort are only appropriate on Wikipedia if they are judgments made by uninvolved parties like art critics or newspaper journalists. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:43, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Response after editing: Hi there, thanks very much for all of your help and advice, I've read a lot of things and believe I've now a lot of good work to update the article correctly and include lots of citations in the correct style. This is the first time I've done a large quantity of wikipedia editing and I'm sure I still have a lot to learn; can you please let me know if there are any glaring errors in style (language or citation) etc? Should I include more quote style sentences with citations instead of the current style? Again, thank you so much for your help Owencm (talk) 00:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this response and your careful updates to the article. The text is now a bit different from the previously-copied content and the inline references add considerable value, so I don't see any further copyvio problem. There are still a few changes needed for the Wikipedia Manual of Style. It will be easier if I make those changes myself and you can see what was necessary from the edit history.

The reasons for a direct quote include a choice of phrasing in a source which is so good that it deserves such and a statement which should be quoted to make it clear that this is exactly what the source has said (for example the exact words describing the achievements an award recognises). Nothing has yet jumped out as needing direct quotes from an overview of the text.

In a sense, tabulated information and unadorned lists such as of works performed do not count towards the article's content. From this point of view the article as it stands is severely unbalanced, consisting mostly of biographies of the company managers rather than describing the company itself, its aims or achievements. I hope this imbalance can be corrected over the next month or so by the addition of high quality content relating more directly to the company and its activities. If this balance cannot be achieved by addition of content, some pruning would be necessary, but let us see how the article evolves for a month or two... I'm not aware of any particular rules about this, but I would not worry if managers' bios were 20% of the article content, but do worry if they are substantially over 50%. --Mirokado (talk) 00:48, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Article content

Some comments about content rather than technicalities:

• Since the company has a relatively small number of dancers, I expect that their individual contribution is significant, so a brief (reliably sourced) bio for each (explaining their contribution to the company) would not be out of place.
• As far as the list of works is concerned, I would prefer a section highlighting works which have a particular significance such as: created for the company, world or UK première, particluarly enthusiastic (or, of course, bad, but I trust there are none of those...) reviews, part of a major world tour, etc, each description with suitable sources. Anybody who just wants a list of performances is better served visiting the NDCW website. That is what I would do in any case. (If that list is not already available on the NDCW website, the source would need to be clarified).

--Mirokado (talk) 00:48, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

References

I have made a few changes to the references, which I think are needed for correct usage of the templates:

• publisher= instead of publisher inside title
• author last= and first= names where available
• date= is publication date where available, or omitted
• accessdate is date on which the page was actually retrieved

I have not had time to finish all of these in one session, you are welcome to do the rest if you wish... Additionally:

• The preferred (but not absolutely required) date style for a British-English subject is "15 January 2011" etc rather than 2011-01-15. If you agree to this change I can do it very easily using a "little script"...
• The reference density in this article means that List-defined references would make the article content easier to read while editing. Again, if you agree to this suggestion, I can use a "little script" to make the change... --Mirokado (talk) 02:19, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

References now updated (modulo anything I have still missed). I notice that the NDCW Historical Repertoire page has the typo "Repetoire" in its top-level title and the html page title. Can you get this corrected? --Mirokado (talk) 22:44, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

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